Psychoanalyzing “the Fish”

“Meaninglessness does not come from being weary of pain. Meaninglessness comes from being weary of pleasure. When you have exhausted that last dream and you find it leaves you barren or empty” -G. K Chesterton

I begin with a quote by the renowned G.K Chesterton for a few different reasons. I believe that great suffering and pain can bring forth immense joy. The following poem is not a poem of pleasure, but one of pain. My hope is that in my analysis I do not come across as judgmental of the author’s potential happiness and quality of life, but rather, open a window to the potential pain and sadness that is displayed throughout her writing. The poem entitled The Fish written by Elizabeth Bishop, has typically been read as a beautiful description of a story. Most people find meaning in the typical fishing story with the twist being the catcher of the fish grows mysteriously attached to the fish, and decides to let it go. It is a beautiful and strange poem indeed, but perhaps the author had deeper repressed motives behind this elegantly woven poem. Through Terry Eagleton’s text entitled Literary Theory, I will be taking psychoanalytical approach to the poem. My intention is to look critically at the poem and attempt to, as Eagleton writes, “tell us something about how literary texts are actually formed, and reveal something of the meaning of that formation.” (Eagleton 155)

To begin, I want to take a quick look at the life of Elizabeth Bishop. Bishop was born in Worcester, Massachusetts on February 8, 1911. Her father passed away when she was only 8 months old. Bishop’s mother became mentally ill and eventually was institutionalized in 1916. This left her orphaned at a very young age, and she went on to live with her grandparents in Nova Scotia. Elizabeth and her mother were never reunited. The rest of her story, while interesting, is largely unimportant according to Freudian theory of psychoanalysis. What is important to...

...we land-dwelling creatures tend to assume, fishes are extraordinarily diverse and their watery habitats provide a vast array of places in which to live and thrive.
Fish species range in size from the smallest known living vertebrate, Trimmatom nanus, a goby, which is mature at a mere 8 millimeters, to the giant whale shark, Rhincodon typus, which can grow as large as 12 meters. There are species of fish living at 5,200 meters above sea level in Tibetan hot springs and fishes that live in a depth of eight thousand meters below the ocean surface — this is an incredible span, over 13 kilometers of vertical distance. No other vertebrate group occupies such a wide band of habitable space.
Marine habitats include the deep sea, the mid-oceans, shrimp burrows, coral heads and sponges, and even the insides of sea cucumbers. Freshwater habitats include streams, rivers, lakes, even 500-meter-deep underground caves, and seasonal pools. African and South American lungfishes can tolerate "suspended animation" by living in dry mud for up to four years.
Certain species of fish can cope with depleted oxygen levels. Air breathing has evolved numerous times in the evolutionary history of fishes. This often involves different parts of the body: i.e. gills, air bladders, “lungs”, skin, the intestines, or the rectum. There are fish species which live in freshwater so pure it resembles distilled, while others live in extremely salty...

...Psychoanalyzing Jokes
Jokes are a part of culture that tries to bring about laughter in words that appears to be humorous. As the saying goes “jokes are half meant “, there are implications of jokes to the human person. Simply put, jokes that are often said in a casual conversation are means for a repressed expression or feeling of a person to come out in the open. Kind of like a “slip of the tongue” situation. To establish the link of jokes in relation to the subconscious, let us take a look at this hypothetical example. A guy who jokes his friends about how his friends are being too childlike because of their parents’ 24/7 cared which according to Sigmund Freud’s Psychoanalytic theory could mean that he has a pathological need for the care of his own parents or at least someone to take care of him. The key concept in this example is that the ability of the guy to ask for love from his parents is repressed because probably he cannot say it blatantly then that desire for that care was voiced out through other means such as a joke.
Driving the point of the connection between the jokes and the subconscious level, let us take a look at jokes in a community. Basing from the degree of the laughter that it had brought assuming that the delivery was good and other factors was alright, if we take a look at it, we see that some jokes are funny to others and to others not funny. It could be said that the jokes are funny because they are true to life (in most...

...The mystery of Shakespeare&#8217;s Hamlet is a phantom of literary debate that has haunted readers throughout the centuries. Hamlet is a complete enigma; a puzzle scholars have tried to piece together since his introduction to the literary world. Throughout the course of Hamlet the reader is constantly striving to rationalize Hamlet&#8217;s odd behavior, mostly through the play&#8217;s written text. In doing so, many readers mistakenly draw their conclusions based on the surface content of Hamlet&#8217;s statements and actions. When drawing into question Hamlet&#8217;s actions as well as his reasons for acting, many assume that Hamlet himself is fully aware of his own motives. This assumption in itself produces the very matter in question. Take for example Hamlet&#8217;s hesitation to kill the king. Hamlet believes that his desire to kill King Claudius is driven by his fathers&#8217; demand for revenge. If this were true, Hamlet would kill Claudius the moment he has the chance, if not the moment he knows for sure that Claudius is guilty of murdering his father. Why does Hamlet hesitate? One must call into question what Hamlet holds to be true. If Hamlet&#8217;s given motivation for killing the king is legitimate, then Claudius should die at about Act 3. Because Hamlet&#8217;s actions do not correspond with his given reasoning, one is forced to look for an alternate explanation for Hamlet&#8217;s behavior. In doing so, one will come to the conclusion that Hamlet is driven...

...agreed a pun and that’s just the way it is. Despite the fact that fish goes through all the trouble of explaining the two types of multiculturalism’s he still in the end decides that they both are actually uniculturalism. Multiculturalism is something that we do not practice according to Stanley Fish we just simply improvise like we have always done and will probably continue to do, unless we admit that we do things on a “case by case basis” a term that fish learned from Charles Taylor. Fish’s goal is to explain that we base our decisions off of logic and when it is logical to do something we do it.
The excerpt from the story The trouble with principle focuses on the two types of multiculturalism and how they both are different. The two types of multiculturalism are weak multiculturalism and strong multiculturalism. Weak multiculturalist want to impose their values on other cultures while the strong multiculturalist understand that some differences cannot be agreed a pun and that’s just the way it is. Despite the fact that fish goes through all the trouble of explaining the two types of multiculturalism’s he still in the end decides that they both are actually uniculturalism. Multiculturalism is something that we do not practice according to Stanley Fish we just simply improvise like we have always done and will probably continue to do, unless we admit that we do things on a “case by case...

...﻿Evolution:
What is evolution? Over time, through millions of years plants and animals have changed over time, in order to increase their chances of survival as well as to adapt to their environment. Evolution doesn’t happen overnight, in a couple of days, weeks, months, or years. It is a slow process that takes a very long time to notice. “The word evolution can be used in many ways, but in biology, it means descent with modification. In other words, small modifications that occur at the genetic level (within the DNA) when a new generation descends from an ancestral population of individuals within a given species”. (strangescience.net, 2014) Over time the modifications fundamentally alter the characteristics of the whole population. When the population accumulates a substantial number of changes and conditions are right, a new species may appear. The main principle of evolutionary theory is that all living things including humans are related to one another through a common ancestor from earlier forms of life about 3.85 million years ago.
Charles Darwin an English naturalist and geologist, was best known for his contributions to evolutionary theory. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors. “The term "natural selection" was popularized by Charles Darwin who intended it to be compared with artificial selection, now more commonly referred to as selective breeding”. (Wikipedia, 2014) While in the Galapagos Islands while...

...plus 1 free space
Air Bladder: This part of the fish enables it to float.
Actinopterygii: This is the subphyla consists of ray-finned fish.
Anal Fin: This is the fin by the anus of the fish, that keeps the fish level in the water and keeps it from rolling.
Bony Fish: Osteichthyes consists of all _____.
Caudal Fin: This is the fin in the back of the fish that propels the fish forward/steers.
Cold-Blooded: When a fish’s body temperature can adjust to their environment, their thermoregulation is .
Dorsal Fin: These are the fins on the top of the fish, that keeps the fish level in the water and keeps it from rolling.
Gills: These are used to take in air from the water.
Gill Rakers: This prevents food and debris from passing over/clogging gills
Lateral Line: This is a canal running down each side of the body, containing their sensory organs that detect movements and currents. This also shows how Osteichthyes have bilateral symmetry.
Operculum: This part of the fish covers the gills.
Osteichthyes: These kinds of fish are all bony fish, and this group of fish makes up about 95% of all species of fish that exist in the world today.
Pectoral Fin: This fin helps fish steer and brake.
Pelvic Fin: This fin help keep the fish level...

...How is the fish characterized? Is it simply a weak victim because it “didn’t fight”? Comment on lines 65-76. In what sense has “victory filled up” the boat, given the fact the speaker finally let the fish go?
In this poem called “The Fish”, Elizabeth Bishop describes the experience of a man who caught a “tremendous fish” (1). I personally don’t think the fish is characterized as a simple victim. In the poem it describes how the fish didn’t fight to get away which gave the fisherman opportunity to take a closer look and realize that the fish already had another five hooks hanging from what he described a lip. This along with other features he sees on the fish like “his brown skin hung in strips like ancient wallpaper” (10,11) tell us in a way that this fish has had a lot of experience in life, in other words someone that is mature and the hooks are proof of it. For us a sign of being mature and be experience is aging, like gray hair, wrinkles. I personally would rather get advice from someone that is older and has experience since a lot to times they have already gone through the same situation I am in and give me a better guidance.
In my opinion this poem talks about the story of a fish being caught as a way to describe to us how the older we are the more experienced we get about life and how to confront certain situations. As I...